


Almost (Sweet Music)

by prfoundbond



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, Closeted Castiel (Supernatural), Coming Out, Dean Has Anxiety and OCD, Drug Use, Edgy Castiel, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Falling Through Music, Idiots in Love, M/M, Multi, Musician Dean Winchester, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Religious Castiel, Self-Acceptance, Touch-Starved, Trigger Warning: Anxiety and Religious Trauma, because I said so, friends to rivals to lovers, resolved tension, rival bands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27958166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prfoundbond/pseuds/prfoundbond
Summary: Dean regrets ever feeling the way he did. He regrets becoming vulnerable, and he regrets having ruined everything.Castiel regrets not saying it. He regrets being closed off, and he regrets letting him get away.Neither of them have the words.Perhaps they can sing to them instead?
Relationships: Anael/Ruby, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Castiel/Meg Masters, Charlie Bradbury/Jo Harvelle, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Kudos: 4





	Almost (Sweet Music)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Raechel aka prfoundbond here!
> 
> Welcome to the first fic I’ve ever actually felt fully right about. I hope you all feel that too. Enjoy! :)

The rain that falls outside the bar has been going for at least an hour now. 

Dean has been plucking at his guitar, trying out different riffs and chords and patterns to match that of the water beating steadily against the rickety old window panes, but nothing particularly inspiring has passed through his fingertips and into his instrument thus far.

He’s been trying to write his own songs for a while now. And it’s not that he doesn’t have the technical skill; he’s been playing and singing since the moment he ever could, practically before he had even mastered the simplistic skills of reading and writing. 

Dean’s just never been one with words. That, or emotions in general. Singing out what some other person felt, that’s perfectly easy. It’s safe. But belting out his own? Dean couldn’t think up a more stomach churning thought. To expose yourself, flesh and blood, completely bare, belly exposed, in front of all those judging faces, and burning eyes; he just couldn’t do it.

And so the words never came. Dean would pick up a pen, and turn it between his fingers, tap it against his desk, and then throw it across the room out of frustration. One time it had somehow burst upon impact, and he had spent the rest of the night scrubbing and scrubbing with every bleach containing product he owned trying to get that stain out of his wall, homework and sleep be damned. Because if his father knew? He’d be worse than dead.

It’s not that his father doesn’t like Dean’s ability to play, and sing. He even enjoys a song or two over a couple of beers.

But John Winchester doesn’t like his eldest son chasing after a dream he’ll never catch up to. And that’s not an “I don’t want you to get disappointed when it doesn’t work out,” but more of a, “you have to take care of your brother and find a real, stable job in case something ever happens to me.”

So Dean makes a habit out of stuffing his failing song journal under his scuffed up mattress every night, and always plays when John’s not home, but still not loud enough so that the neighbors will hear and report his musical misbehavior to a grumpy John Winchester when he gets home. 

But while he’s away? Dean plays for hours and hours at a time. And he still brags to his buddies about the time his fingers really did in fact bleed from the incessant picking and strumming, as much as they just roll their eyes and laugh. 

He mostly plays for Sam. Sam, who will come storming into Dean’s room after a particularly rough day of middle school drama and advanced classes, because his little brother is smart as no other, another fact that he proudly boasts to anyone who cares to ask, and Sam’ll beg Dean to play his current favorites, which are never rock, and seemingly always some song from the top one hundreds that Dean just cannot catch up with.

They’re never Dean’s favorite, but Sam is, so he’ll play for hours if it means a smile on his little brother’s face.

The rain has started coming down harder now, switching from a pleasing sort of background noise you could fall asleep to into something infinity more concerning. The windows are almost shaking now against the heavy droplets, and Dean can’t help but wonder why they haven’t gotten new ones put in. In fact, Dean would do it himself if they only asked.

‘They,’ being Ellen and Jo, of course. They’ve been running the Roadhouse since God only knows when, it having been the Harvelle family business and all. Jo mostly waits the tables and manages the entertainment while Ellen is really in charge and takes care of the actual bar.

Dean’s been extremely lucky to have managed to get Jo as a friend since he had moved here, now almost a full decade ago. She’s been letting him use the stage and all it’s equipment for just over a year now, ever since she first caught Dean eyeing an acoustic down at Novak’s downtown. He had been reluctant at first, but she had insisted very passionately, and even offered to pay him to perform a couple nights a week. And with Sam barely able to eat a full bowl of cereal in the morning, Dean had given in to her exemplary offer, all pride aside.

And so here he is, stormed in on a Thursday afternoon. Sam had told Dean that he was staying over at Eileen’s today after school for some project, and while, if anything, that should calm his nerves, all Dean can do is run through every bothersome possibility his brain can manage to think up. 

What if she has a bad home situation? What if Sam gets sick? What if Sam comes home early and Dean’s not there? What if John comes home early and neither of them are there?

He strums down roughly then, and the noise that his guitar produces is everything off-pitch and sharp like a needle. The few heads in the bar turn towards him, and all he can do is turn red and awkwardly chuckle out a very sad sounding, “sorry.” They all turn back away, all three of them, because let’s be honest, who’s getting a drink at four in the afternoon anyways? And Dean is left to his own devices again. 

Unable to focus back on his music, he reaches down and searches haphazardly through the old bag leaning against his stool, grabbing his banged up phone. There are, as he could’ve guessed, no new missed messages or calls, but of course he had to check. And, just as a precaution, he finds Sam’s contact and sends him a quick, ‘hey. at the roadhouse. let me know if you’re at eileen’s and message me if anything sketchy happens, okay?” 

He stares intently down at the screen for a few moments, tapping his left hand rhythmically against the body of the guitar still sitting in his lap, until a yellow thumbs up emoji pops onto his screen, and he can breathe again.

“Hey,” sounds a voice behind him, and he startles, having to push the heel of his boot against the stage to keep from toppling over in surprise. Dean looks over his shoulder and is met with Jo, arms crossed across her chest, a quizzical expression adorning her soft face. “Sorry. You good?”

She’s talking about his still tapping fingers, and tight grip around his half dead cellphone. “Oh. Yeah, I’m okay. Just, uh, making sure Sam’s alright is all.”

“Right.” She doesn’t look like she wants to give up quite that easily, but continues anyway, “Well, I was just gonna ask what your plan was. ‘Cause it’s down pouring pretty ugly out there, and I’d ask you to play until it passes but we already have another group booked in an hour.”

Dean twists in the stool, finally dropping his phone back into his still open bag. “What? Until now I’d thought I was the only musician in this whole damn town. Who’ve you got booked?”

Jo sighs, suddenly looking like she’s bracing herself. She looks around, and then back at Dean, her face all scrunched up. “Don’t kill me. It’s a newly formed band. Indie, alt rock sort of thing. A couple of the members swung by like a week ago asking if they could play.”

Dean shakes his head, still confused. “Why would I kill you, now?”

Jo gives him one of those ‘I hate to tell you this’ smiles, and leans closer into his space, lowering her voice. “Because the band...it was kind of formed by Castiel and Meg from school.”

Dean’s stomach drops, and his mind starts to race. “Since when was he a singer? And when did ‘Castiel and Meg’ become a thing?”

Jo takes a small step back, playing absentmindedly with the chain around her throat, bouncing it between her forefingers. “I heard they’ve been seeing each other since the beginning of summer. Douchebags attract and all I guess.”

Dean stares at Jo, dumbfounded. He can barely remember the guitar still sitting half in his lap. “So...why did you give them a spot? This is like, the ultimate form of betrayal, Jo. I thought the Roadhouse was our spot!”

“Dude, calm down. I just wanted to know if they were actually any good. If they suck, which they probably will, I’ll just never let them back inside this place again. Bad press or whatever. And if they’re good? I hardly doubt they’d stay here for very long. Daddy’s money. The both of them.” 

Dean runs his hand through his hair, tugging at it anxiously. “Okay. Well, if you have to bare witness to this shit show then I guess it’s only fair if I have to as well.” He glances out the window, still being attacked by blurry droplets of rain. “I don’t think I should be going out in this weather anyhow.”

Jo pats his shoulder, “okay. Well, this is when I kick you off stage. Go do homework or something at one of the tables while you wait. And don’t tell me you don’t have any because I know for a fact that you do, Winchester.” She pushes Dean forward playfully, and he smiles back at her before standing from the stool, reaching upward in a stretch. His guitar is strapped to his chest still, and he has to pull it over his head, before he grabs the case sitting on the stage a couple feet away.

He got this guitar years ago now. Dean had been working odd jobs while Sam was at school, and he would often skip classes himself to make the extra cash. He’d give half to Sam so he could buy himself snacks or anything else he’d need at school that John didn’t care about, and the other half he’d keep in an old metal cigarette tin kept at the back of his bottom bedside drawer, crammed behind other random junk he had accumulated over the year. After a few months of continued labor, he had saved himself up enough for a pre-owned acoustic from some random online. Sure, it wasn’t the safest thing Dean had ever done, but he had a gun hidden in his back pocket, so he wasn’t so concerned.

Jo has already went off-stage and is wiping down a table in the far right corner of the bar when Dean carries his bag on his shoulder, guitar case in hand, to another table furthest away from any other patrons, tucked into the left of the room, nearest to the door. He slides into the booth and drops his bag against the wall, sticking his arm in and trying to locate his notebook and a pencil or some other writing utensil without actually looking, his eyes instead fixed outside, where cars are pulling into the little parking lot, windshield wipers working aggressively against the downpour.

Just as he manages to drop his notebook and a mechanical pencil that’s completely out of lead on the table, the door swings open, and a gust of cool air floods the front of the bar. He shivers, but doesn’t search for his coat. The room had been pretty cozy heat-wise before it was exposed to the freezing outdoor weather, and once everyone was inside it would be even more blistering. While the Roadhouse wasn’t a huge venue, and people mostly stayed in their seats, there was always a lot of heavy breathing from either people yelling over the blaring music to get another drink or, usually following the first, drunkenly screaming the wrong lyrics to whatever song was being played on stage.

Dean then watches as people slowly flood into the bar, each time the door opening a gust of wind and the crescendo of the storm outside repeating almost rhythmically.

And as time passes, Dean can feel his stomach start to clench and and his foot now tapping against the creaking wooden floor. He counts as he does this, and by the time the parking lot is officially stuffed with its last vehicle, he’s nearing the three hundred mark.

Dean has always been a nervous person. He isn’t quite sure when or how it started, but he’s known the feeling for as long as he can remember, and he absolutely hates it. The thing is, it doesn’t come from being around a lot of people; he’s perfectly fine getting up in front of a new crowd every week, and singing as loud as he wants. It’s usually only with very specific people or situations. Like his father. Or, in this case; Castiel Novak.

Now, Castiel was an anomaly. Dean would consider himself a good reader of other people, but for some reason, he could just never crack the other boy. They had been friends, once. Dean can still remember the first time they met in elementary school, when they bonded over each having a dead mother in common. Morbid, yeah, but they were kids, and they needed to feel a little less alone.

Maybe that was what pushed them apart in the end. At some point they had just become the other’s acting therapist, their punching bag. 

Or maybe it was something Dean has, thus far, chosen to ignore since the last time they had actually, truly talked. They saw each other in the hallways, and even had the odd shared class together, but they mostly stayed out of each other’s way, never having exchanged a full sentence since.

And now, here he is, almost two years later, and still somehow terrified of facing him. Senior year has only just begun, and Dean still has yet to see Castiel in any of his classes. But then again, he was always a hundred times smarter than Dean, and probably finished a good majority of the necessary classes last school year. 

Point is, they hadn’t left off on great terms. And now Dean is sitting in the back of a dimly lit bar waiting for Castiel to show up and attempt to serenade a crowd for the first time, probably ever.

Dean really had never had this many people show up for any of his own gigs. Perhaps it was the fact that Dean was less than popular around town, and while Castiel wasn’t too cool either, at least from what he can recall, he did have an enormous family with so many members he wasn’t sure how he had been able to keep track of them all. Then there were the church buddies, and of course his father’s co-workers, but even so; most of the patrons buzzing around the room here didn’t look very old, nor like they would be caught anywhere near the outside of their houses at eight o’clock on a sunny Sunday morning.

Dean is still tapping away when Jo slides into the booth next to him, trying to catch his eyes. “Well. Looks like it’ll be a busy night then, huh?” She surveys the crowd for a moment before turning back to him.

Dean’s eyes are glued to the door now, “I guess.” There’s a pause before he turns to Jo, glancing around before lowering his voice in a hushed tone, “d’you think these are Meg’s friends? I can’t imagine Cas— uh, Castiel, hanging out with this sort of crowd.”

Jo snorts, looking back at the people sat at the tables and the bar, all while exchanging eager glances and talking the night away under flickering, yellow fluorescent lights. “Why not both?”

Dean looks at Jo, brow furrowed in a confused expression, trying desperately to pick out what the knowing glint in her eyes could possibly be alluding to. “Why do I have a feeling you know something that I don’t?”

“Isn’t that always the case?” Her eyes turn toward the door, and she tilts her head to get Dean to look too. 

Three people immediately enter the Roadhouse, and Dean is so far off the edge of his seat he can’t even feel the biting air that sweeps through the entrance. 

They’re all girls; Dean knows them from school. At the front is Anael, Castiel’s immediate cousin, adorning heels, black leggings, and an expensive looking cropped leather jacket, dyed a color somewhere between mahogany and merlot. She practically oozes confidence, and the whole room has their eyes on her. 

Dean is beyond confused; he can still remember when Anael was all pigtails and patterned dresses, crooked teeth and awkward sitting glasses. Perhaps she had rebelled against her family. He wouldn’t be surprised, given how stuffy the rooms always felt whenever he was forced to be on his best behavior while tagging along to any of Castiel’s social or familial events.

Walking up behind her is Ruby, holding a bass case over her shoulder, heeled boots squeaking on the muddied hardwood. She has a look on her face as if she’d rather be anywhere else, and slips an arm through Anael’s before they head backstage together. 

Ruby had probably befriended Anael and gotten her into a rougher crowd. 

Then there’s Meg. She’s pushing a silver platform truck, and there’s a tarp draped over it, tied down with thick rope. Of course they’d brought their own equipment; Dean can practically feel the rich person narcissism dripping from her as she walks by, not even passing a glance at them huddled in their corner.

There’s still someone missing.

“Jo, I think I should probably leave—“

“No! You’re in this with me already, like it or not. Plus I refuse to miss your reaction to—“

“To what—“

The door swings open one final time, as if in some incessant slow motion. A boy walks through the door, clearly out of breath as he huffs out and takes off a beanie, running a jeweled hand through messed dark hair. 

There’s a certain suspension of rain droplets that have wet the ends, and now it sticks up every which way, and falls into his face.

His face.

He had grown stubble over the summer, and there’s a certain maturity in the set of his jaw, the shadow in his frosty blue eyes. 

He has an eyebrow piercing now. That’s definitely new.

And so are the clothes; all black, jeans that are so torn and shaggy Dean can’t tell how he could even wear them, and an oversized t-shirt of a band he doesn’t know. There’s a few small chains dangling against his throat, and Dean’s pulse races against his own.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Dean pushes Jo out of the booth, and she looks concerned, all doe-eyed, somehow communicating an ‘are you okay?’ without even saying it, but all he can do is apologize to her over and over, before finally just taking off in the direction of the bathrooms.

Dean looks back over his shoulder before he pushes open the door, and he is met by eyes that haven’t graced his body in years, and suddenly he’s dizzy again, charging into the bathroom and steadying himself against an old white sink. 

The mirror is fogged up and scratched, and there are random drawings and words written all over the brick walls, a bucket abandoned in the corner still full of suds, a sponge sitting up against it.

But this crumby bathroom is still somehow state-of-the-art in comparison to Dean himself; he looks like crap, all pale and shaky, like a deer caught in headlights, or a puppy kicked to the side of the road in the middle of a storm.

He takes a few deep breaths, each exhale rattling his lungs. 

That was it. He had seen Castiel, again, after all this time, and he saw him too. He had looked so different, and Dean can hardly even recall what he was like before, all sweaters and button-ups, cleanly pressed dress pants and a clean face.

He’s startled by the door swinging open behind him, but it’s only Jo. She quietly shuts it behind herself with a click, and walks over to Dean slowly. “Hey. You okay?”

Dean looks down at the sink again. He’s still braced against it, and his knuckles have turned white.

Jo seems to notice, and walks closer, in a way that he knows is supposed to make him feel more comfortable and not frighten him anymore, as if she’s approaching a mischievous dog in the middle of shards of broken glass, and if she moves too quickly it’ll run and hurt itself. She takes his hands in hers, turning them and seemingly almost inspecting them over, and they’re still shaking, but not quite as much as before. 

She squeezes his hands gently, before looking up into his eyes in a long moment of simple breathing. Her voice is soft when she speaks up, “do you want to go home? You really don’t have to stay for me, I didn’t—“

“It’s okay. I— I need to see him again. I can’t keep running from it, right?” He’s looking for affirmation in her gaze, but she still looks uncertain, mouth open as if she wants to speak, but decides against it. Instead, she just nods and smiles, thin-lipped in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Dean drops his hands from Jo’s, staring at the door for a long moment, blinking. He turns back to her with a wavering confidence.

“I have to do this.”


End file.
